workFLUENT

Inspiration

Imagine you've just been hired for your next job, you're thrilled to start, and you get to move abroad. Sure, you know some some of the country's native language but then it hits you - how are you supposed to talk about code in a language when all you've every been taught is conversational language? That's what workFLUENT is here to help you not only accomplish, but excel at.

What it does

workFLUENT is developed to help elevate employees to working-level proficency, being able to easily talk on technical matters within their own field -- from medicine to technology. There are multiple features workFLUENT provides:

Bee-yoncé - Chat with Bee-yoncé, our AI chatbot here to help you directly translate phrases and find phrases that will help you converse about any work-related topic you're interested in
Flashcards - Quiz yourself on field terminology in your target language
Reading - Learn more from professional texts, reading back and forth between your primary and target languages
Connect - Connect with employees in the same profession working towards the same language

How we built it

Over the course of 36 hours, we developed the chatbot, prototype app, and website. The chatbot, Bee-yoncé, was developed through Open AI API and Python and has an interface developed with PyQt. The prototype app was developed through Figma, making it possible for us to create a seamless experience for the user. Finally, the website was created as a presentation for workFLUENT through Canva, HTML and CSS.

Challenges we ran into

We had limited prior experience with PyQt, APIs, and Figma. This was a learning curve, but one we were motivated to overcome. Through hours of research, development, and trial-and-error, we were able to gain experience in languages and tools we had not before but now have in our toolkits for our future projects and careers.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud to have picked up many skills, as mentioned before. We have new prototyping skills gained from using Figma, new GUI-development tools from learning PyQt, and have a better understanding of APIs from our development of our own OpenAI assistant.

What we learned

Beyond furthering our technical knowledge, we learned a lot surrounding quick problem-solving and developing with the user experience in mind. At all points, we effectively communicated with one another to make sure we could have seamless integration between each component. And most importantly, as we developed, we tested our working prototypes to make sure we created a no-stress, easy-to-use, and helpful environment for our user. After all, there would be no workFLUENT if there was no goal of building a supportive learning environment for users.

What's next for workFLUENT

workFLUENT may have exciting features, but the design process is never completely over. We are looking to continue to develope an even more useful and advanced version of Bee-yoncé through further fine-tuning and user-testing. Outside of this feature, we also want to ensure we're continuing to advance our user-friendly experience on the app, and hope to test it out and gain feedback from more motivated language learners.

This isn't the end for workFLUENT, so just for now - au revoir, ciao, namaste, مع السلامة, 再见, auf wiedersehen, خداحافظ, and bye!